Olphaert den Otter: S&K Morf

In 2003 Rotterdam artist Olphaert den Otter conceived a plan for a large painting of the shelter that a homeless person had constructed for himself. Structures like this are usually made of materials that other people throw away. He came across a similar mix of the worthless and the valuable in medieval paintings depicting the stable at Bethlehem or the hermitage of St Jerome. This prompted Den Otter to make a study of the motif using examples of stables and hermitages in Western art history. The stable and hermitage morphology series he made between 2004 and 2007 runs to 126 works. The series culminates in a monumental painting of the ultimate refuge. This catalogue, which also contains an essay by Philip Peters, was published to accompany the exhibition.